Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Burros? Icky? Apes? Other?
How does The Planet Of The Apes movie make us contemplate and wrestle with the concept of xenophobia? Does it pertain to the Science Fiction we have read? Use quotations from the movie and text to support your claims. Please use googledocs to create your notes after each viewing of the movie; post to this blog after the final movie excerpt is shared.
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In the movie "Planet of the Apes" xenophobia was reveresed in the way that the Apes were scared of Taylor or the humans where usually its us humans that are afraid of strange things.
ReplyDeleteTaylor believed that the apes evolved from the humans and that they were more advenced. This reminded me of the story "Puppet Show". The Colonel was relieved when he thought that the aliens were humanoid. The idea that the human race is superior to everything/everyone else.
Icky was hated by most humans because it was seen as a leech when it truly was a harmless loving being. Taylor thought that these apes were stupid and obviously not advanced when really they werent that stupid at all.
Xenophobia is having pre-determined ideas before getting to know someone/something.
The Planet of the Apes, like the story with the Puppet Show and the story with the Hussirs, show a reversal of roles. Humans today perceive themselves as the dominant species, superior to the others. We make our dominance known by abusing animals, enslaving them, confining them to small cages and submitting them to experimental drugs. The Science Fiction perspective allows humans to think about their own actions by literally watching what would happen if animals had the power. The main cause of xenophobia is misunderstanding. In Muse, the father claimed that he was trying to help his son, but he did not take the time to listen and understand the relationship between his son and Icky before he killed the slug. In Planet of the Apes, humans wild emotions and violence are not understood by the apes, and that is why they fear them and put them in captivity.
ReplyDeleteIn the movie Planet of the Apes our xenophobia is portrayed in the scariest way in my opinion, with a different being as the master race and humans as the "pet" or "animal." This portrayal of xenophobia is the scariest to me because we are not only not the master race we are afraid of the master race so we are scared of captivity and our captives. It is also vise versa because in the movie, Taylor calls the head ape out for being scared of him and the ape admits it. When this happens it creates a circle of xenophobia everyone is scared of others just because we are different than one another. But in the story about Blik it is a different situation because the main character is born into slavery and knows nothing different he is not scared of captivity because he doesn't know freedom. In the end of the story the Hussirs are not ever scared of the wild humans and this is scary to because we are not feared at all and can be controlled easily. I think what we are scared most about when it comes to xenophobia is losing our identity, because in the movie Planet of the Apes Taylor is scared of the surgery because he doesn't want to lose his identity like his tall friend did.
ReplyDeleteThe movie Planet of the Apes, and the short story Muse, xenophobia is one (if the not the main) theme. In Muse, a man and his alien slug live in a symbiotic relationship. Because it is different, however, he is the recipient of a lot of prejudice. This is a perfect situation to describe xenophobia. The father hated the musician because he didn't understand that the slug was beneficial. Only after he destroyed it out of his own fear, did he realize that his son was actually benefiting from their relationship. In the end, xenophobia destroyed a young man's talent and his relationship with his father.
ReplyDeleteIn Planet of the Apes, the xenophobic role usually occupied by weary humans is replaced by a society of apes. They hated and mistreated the humans because they were "animals". Then, once Taylor revealed himself to be much more capable than his comrades, he was treated badly because he was different from the other humans. He was thought to be an expiriment that Dr. Zira created. However, in the end he proved himself to be different.
In the Science-Fiction genre, xenophobia is definitely a main concept that has shaped many stories and movies into what they are today.
In Planet Of The Apes the concept of xenophobia is reversed because it is the apes who feel as though they are the superior race and are fearful of an imposing intelligent species. They conveyed the human species as malignant, and parasitic to the world and other species around them. They are made sure to have population kept under control as well as being caged at almost all times.
ReplyDeleteXenophobia is displayed in the movie, Planet of the Apes, and also in the other literary pieces because they all have a foreign theme. The plat of the movie is based on reversed roles in society where apes are in control of humans and they have a fear of facing the truth that humans are the superior race. The apes come across an intelligent human, Taylor, who tests all that they believe in. They are afraid of Taylor because he knows the truth and the facts that humans are above all other animals but they refuse to believe it based upon their beliefs that had already been established thousands of years ago. They are afraid of what the change could bring on their society.
ReplyDeletePlanet Of The Apes makes us wrestle with the idea of xenophobia because they are evolved from humans themselves and it is our fault that they took over. Also because they are from the same planet as they statue of liberty is shown at the end of the movie. It is a curious idea of xenophobia portrayed in this movie because it is showing that we should be more afraid of ourselves and mankind rather than the apes that you would think of to start. We are more of "foreigners" to the planet and civilization than the apes.
ReplyDeleteIn "Planet of the Apes", Puppet Show, and The silk and the song. All show a reversal of roles compared to our society. Humans today perceive themselves as the main species, superior to every other living creature. We make our dominance known by controlling everything, even enslaving our own discriminated kind. The Science Fiction perspective allows humans to think about their own actions by literally watching what would happen if others, in this case apes that are so genetically similar to us, have the power. The main cause of xenophobia is misunderstanding, and the unknown. In Muse, the father claimed that he was trying to help his son, but he did not take the time to listen and understand the relationship between his son and Icky before he killed the slug. In Planet of the Apes, human’s wild emotions and violence are not understood by the apes, and that is why they fear them and put them in captivity.
ReplyDeleteThe xenophobia in "Planet of the Apes" show us that even though something or someone different shows up, we shouldn't come to rash decision making and that all the facts should be taken into account. Taylor never thought that he was on earth and even though he had the same vegetation and human life forms he could not see what was in front of his eyes. Even the apes had similar believes as many religions have, the scrolls where the only truth and anything that contradicted them was heresy and where going to silence or end anybody that was willing or able to challenge them. Much like the Silk and the Song and "Planet of the Apes" the humans where slaves and reverted back to their primitive selves and used only what they remembered from previous generations to get to the star tower and to keep themselves organized which is what the apes used to controlled their society.
ReplyDeleteThe movie, "Planet of the Apes" makes us contemplate with the concept of xenophobia by demonstrating how terrible and destructive it can be to hate other races and creatures. Many people died in the movie because of the apes everlasting hate and disapproval for humans. Also, it was interesting how the movie portrayed humans as the weaker race when we have always considered ourselves superior to animals, and are so similar genetically to apes. I connected the movie to the short story the "Silk and the Song" because of how both of them depict xenophobia throught slavery and complete dominance of the other culture.
ReplyDeleteIn the movie, and the storys, are shown xenophobia from a differnt perspective, of others. The Storys extrapolate on the idea of fear of something unknown, something greater than ourselves. An example of this is in Planet of the apes, when tayor relizes humans are not the ruling species, and even more so at the end, when he relizes he has made it back to earth, but everything he knew was destroyed. This would represent fear of our selves, which can be unknown. Who knows what destruction humans can create. When will our knowlege kill us? Other storys we as humans still fear the unknown, even though it is harmless like icky. Our fear can cause us to overreact in voilent ways. This storys all do a good job of representing our fear, and actions of the unkown. They all give us a better picture of ourselves, and we can think over reactions now, and make a more logical choice.
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ReplyDeleteThe Planet of the Apes makes us reconsider xenophobia in a variety of ways: Do we fear ourselves, or our past? This definitely pertains to the xenophobia stories. Much of this is by Peripetia: The reversal of normal, like in "The Silk and the Song". It also comes from misunderstanding like in Muse.It can also be found by the whole idea of never getting a chance to defend ourselves: They managed, in POA, to try an animal unfairly. The Planet of the Apes makes one consider our own level of Xenophobia. For example, one prominent example frequently shown in the movie was our own battle of Evolution vs. Religion. Although I do believe in Theistic Evolution, Darwinism, for quite a while, was treated as heresy, as if it was evil, or not a valid theory.
ReplyDeleteI think that xenophobia is displayed in Planet of the Apes because of the weird idea that humans evolved from the apes. It is a weird concept to think about and it shows that we are the "underdogs". The same idea of slavery and xenophobia is showed in "The Silk and the Song."
ReplyDeleteThe movie makes us contemplate xenaphobia because we are scared of the unknown and in the movie the unknown would be the fact that monkeys or apes are controlling humans.
ReplyDeleteThe movie "Planet of the Apes" deffinetly relates to xenophobia in the sence that things could happen to our world without us as humans even knowing. In this movie, the main character, being a human, doesn't think he is home on Earth because the planet he is on is ruled my apes. But in the eld, we discover that he has been home on Earth the entire time he was on the planet. The apes blew up Earth and the United States and the human finds out in the end by seeing the statue of liberty sunk in the sand and broken on the beach where it once stood in the place he called home.
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